Today we reached Shangri-La. This name suggests something like a heavenly place. We’re not sure about this, but we are at a altitude of 3300 mtrs. Yesterday we reached this plateau after a climb of over 1400 mtrs from Quaitou at the entrance of the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Once on the plateau there was a change of air, view and people. Now we could look over greater distances, we saw people and houses in Tibetan style and passed our first stupa after some kms. We spent the night in a basic guesthouse along the road; two beds and a broken tv in the room, to wash we got a bucket of cold  and two thermosses with hot water plus a plastic bowl, all put on the floor. Toilet shared, made accommodate 3 persons at a time. Now we stay in Kevin’s Trekker Inn (www.kevintrekkerinn.com) with Kevin as a perfect English speaking landlord. Because of the national holidays here everything is overbooked and we have to sleep in the dorm.
From Lijiang we biked up to Quaitou, where we spent the night. We had breakfast in the Gorged Tiger Caf’e owned by Margo from Australia (already 11 years here). Then we rode up into the gorge. It is really amazing and very impressive to see how the Yangtze river, somtimes a couple of 100 mtrs wide now preesses itself through this narrow gorge, at plces not more than 10-20 meters wide. Raging waters! We spent the night in Tina’s guesthouse, 20 kms into the gorge, which we only could reach over a rocky and balcony-like road. Spectacular.Tina’s was a good and comfortable place, and we dined with American Tom, living in London, British Dorothy, living in Chang Mai Thailand, and Leo, Tom’s tourguide. In the morning we hiked 300 mtrs down (and up) to the bottom of the gorge to see the anger and power of the river close by. After that we had lunch and spoke a long time with 32 year-old Lee and his wife (sorry, forgot the name). Very interesting and nice persons, they give us confidence in the future of the world.
But now: change of plans. Instead of riding eastward and southward back to the Tiger Leaping Gorge as the Asian Way of Life route suggests, we will take a bus more north, over passes exceeding 4000 meters and go to Decqin. From there we intend to ride south along the Mekong river, which is sais to flow through a fantastically deep valley. In Weixi we want to take a bus again to bring us back over the mountains in the Yangtze valley. From there we’ll pick up the Asian w.o.l route again and head for Dali. We must be there before Oct. 17th, because we have to extend our visa.
Frans